Our Duck, Daffy (Or Why We Shouldn’t Use Advanced Genetic Engineering to Create Velociraptor Gardeners)

One of the most memorable parts in Arthur C. Clarke’s otherwise forgettable 1997 novel, 3001: THE FINAL ODYSSEY, occurs when the protagonist (the dude HAL9000 killed by severing his tether, thus dooming him to float off into space) first begins to explore the year 3001. Among the many outrageous things that have changed since astronaut Frank Poole’s time are: BrainCaps—devices which plug the human brain directly into computers, a series of “space elevators” that connect orbiting space stations to the Earth, and women now prefer men who’s privates are more…say “natural” (there are no circumcisions in the year 3001, though one woman explains that there are some women who have a kink for this “deformity” Poole has).

Oh, yeah—and they have FUCKING VELOCIRAPTORS AS SERVANTS.

I can’t recall all the details (it’s been 10 years since I read this novel) but Poole is in some kind of garden, and what walks casually around the corner? A RAPTOR! Poole hilariously freaks out (the author reminds us that Poole saw JURASSIC PARK as a young child) but everyone else is calm.

“Why are you freaking out, Frank? It’s just the gardener.”

Indeed. If only we lived in a world of such exotic pets—though of course, we do. I know people with pet snakes, rats, birds, turtles, frogs, dogs, and cats. Those last two might not sound very exotic, but people keep all sorts of rare/unusual breeds of both canines and felines. My wife and I participated in a community walk when the Department of Transportation re-opened Interstate Highway-64 out here in Saint Louis. The most memorable part of this walk? Was it walking a brand-new-never-driven-upon stretch of highway?

No. It was seeing the massive Irish Wolf-hound that someone had with them.

This animal was a massive beast, truly a sight to behold. Hardly a normal little “puppy.” Last month, my wife and I took our dog Rusty downtown to participate in the annual Marti Gras Pet Parade (sponsored by Purina Pet Food). Since it was a “pet” parade there were more than just the usual dogs/cats—one lady had a miniature horse with her! Growing up, my family had a revolving door of pets—gerbils, cats, dogs, even a turtle. But the strangest pet I ever had was our duck, Daffy.

I remember waking up and it was dark outside, when we first got Daffy. I think that it was late at night, but perhaps it was just very early in the morning. Either way, it was pitch-black in our house…when there was a knock at our door. My Dad’s cousin was at the door, with her boyfriend/husband (I can’t recall which he was at the time). They had a large, wicker picnic basket with them. Apparently they’d been out (as one does) and caught a duck (again, as one does). So far all very much on the up and up, wouldn’t you agree? But rather than keep this duck for themselves, they had come to give it to my family.

I should stop for a moment and explain that, while most of my father’s family lived in what I would consider to be the “country,” my family lived in a modest ranch-house in the middle of Raytown, Missouri—a dismal (even then, in the 1980’s) suburb of Kansas City. We had a large backyard (though I suspect not as large as I remember) but not enough land to keep “barnyard animals” like a duck.

Still, my sister Amber and I DID have one of those floppy-sided plastic kiddie pools you see at Wal-Mart during the long dog-days of summer.

My parents, being the progressive/animal-loving-types that they are, accepted this gift and became the proud pet parents of one Mr. Daffy Duck. Daffy was pretty small in body, but large in feet. I remember thinking his feet looked like those flippers scuba divers often wear. The first thing we did was put Daffy in the pool in our backyard. He happily quacked and swam endless circles around the edgesl. Our family cat, Kitty-Witty, was a bit of a worry. We did our best to keep her away from Daffy during his time with us, but this proved difficult (natural predatory urges being what they are).

I can distinctly recall one day when I was outside, watching Daffy swim—when off in the distance I spotted Kitty-Witty slinking through the grass with her head low. Once the cat was chased off, I decided to get some bread and toss it at Daffy, which was fun for both of us.

It seemed that Daffy was going to be a part of our family, when a neighbor informed us that keeping ducks as a pet was illegal in the city. Worse, he told my parents that it wasn’t good for Daffy.

I’m not sure if they’d known this all along and were just giving my sister and I an interesting pet for a few days—or if they truly thought we could keep him. Either way, my parents decided to take Daffy and re-introduce him to the wild. We drove to Lake Jacomo where my family sadly deposited him back into the natural world. From then on, my family would periodically gaze skyward and ask “I wonder where Daffy is?”

Sadly, I now know that human beings can’t take a wild animal “in” and then put it back “out” into the wider-world. Doing so nearly always equals death—so Daffy probably died, either of starvation (no one was there to throw bread at him) or someone killed him (because he wasn’t afraid of people).

We as a species are approaching a dangerous point in which, through science, we will be able to engineer Velociraptor gardeners…though we really shouldn’t. People shouldn’t do anything to nature but leave it the hell alone. I mean, what if someday we DO get our VELOCIRAPTORS GARDENDERS? And say something terrible happens (like a nosy neighbor) and we have to go put them back in the wild—who will be there to throw bread at them?

Get Your Tickets Here!

As with a lot of people I know, I get nervous around police officers. It doesn’t have anything to do with any past crimes or illicit secrets; my life, if it were used as the basis for a cop movie, would be entirely boring and would not make any money at the box office. In essence, I’m a boring person. And while I’ve never done anything that would warrant their tackling me in a crowded department store or chasing me down on a high-speed getaway, I still feel like I’ve done something wrong, that I’m guilty.

When I come across a police officer out in public, I’ll wonder what he’s doing or looking for. Most of the time, I’ll see him pick up mouthwash or a snack food of some kind, but still I wonder if he might be on the lookout for someone. An arsonist. A murderer. Thieves with their pockets loaded. And I’ll steer clear, imagining a scenario in which I’m mistaken for the culprit and brought down face-first for a meeting with the floor. Worse still is the mysterious notion I sometimes have that I’ve actually done something wrong and simply don’t know it. There are chunks of time I simply cannot recall — they’re hazy, translucent like a thick sheet of plastic — and I wonder, Was I sitting at home on the Internet, or was I out robbing elderly shopkeepers?

Part of my fear, I suppose, stems from the fact that I’ve already broken the law, so maybe I’m predisposed to criminality. What else am I capable of? I have to wonder. The other part comes from the various encounters I’ve had with men in uniform.

My earliest recollection of a police officer comes from a time, one afternoon, when I was with a few of the kids my mother watched as part of her in-home daycare. I was maybe nine or ten, and the kids I was with were around the same age. We were sitting in the car, waiting for my mother to pick up a few things from Venture, a now-defunct department store chain. She’d told me she’d be right back, and we’d been sitting in the car for no more than ten minutes when, in the middle of a bout of rowdiness, a police officer drove by and saw us sitting in the back seat. Less than five minutes later, the officer was standing at the window and asking where my mother was. Nervous, I told him that she was inside, and when he then asked how long she’d been gone, my sense of time vanished, and I had to think. I suppose in saying, “Um, thirty minutes?” I was slightly overestimating, and I realized this as the officer’s face tightened.

“That long?” he said.

He left for the building, and when my mother came back a few minutes later she was flustered and agitated. “When we get home, your dad isn’t going to hear a word of this,” she said, her eyes slits in the rearview mirror as she started the car.

Years later, when I was a teenager, my high school had a police offer that would stay on full-time to patrol the building and keep everyone in line. This was not long after the school shootings at Columbine and Jonesboro, and so not only did we students have the underlying fear that our small-town school might be next, we had a disgruntled, stone-faced man with a gun roaming our halls.

Even then, I felt awkward. Passing by Officer Ewing on the way to lunch or science class, I’d look at the floor, thinking that if we made eye contact he would maybe slam me into my locker before searching it. I imagined him calling me “Punk” or “Scumbag” or any of those other TV cop names for criminals. Although I had nothing to hide, and no secrets to keep except my brewing desire for any number of the varsity basketball players, I felt just as edgy as if I’d lent my locker to a known terrorist or drug kingpin, and whatever unseemly items they’d stored in there would be pinned on me in the next unannounced round of drug-sniffing dogs.

In reality, my run-ins with police officers would come later, once I planted myself in the driver’s seat. When practicing with my mother, it was my tendency to drive slow enough that I might simply step out of the car should something happen. The needle on the speedometer skirted the number twenty like a prom queen avoiding a member of the math club, and I sat hunched forward, my eyes always on the lookout for the loose dog or toddler I was sure I’d run down. Once I had graduated from practicing and bought a sportier car, the tendency to play it safe fell away, and, animals and children be damned, I would fly down the streets, passing cars as if I actually had somewhere to be.

Maybe the change had to do with my mother no longer being in the car with me, but regardless of her absence, whenever I would eventually have a close call with disaster — choosing the wrong moment to try and pass a car on a two-lane highway; misjudging the time I had to pull out in front of an oncoming truck — I’d fight the feeling that had plagued me when I was sixteen. I’d do my best to ignore the unsettling feeling at the pit of my stomach until I more or less forgot about it. Things got worse when I started my first year of college and found myself navigating the highways of a new state whose motto might as well have been, “You’d better keep up.” It took me a short time to acclimate, but once I got into the mindset of a Missouri driver, there was no stopping me. Suddenly, doing seventy-five down country roads was no problem. Changing busy lanes with only inches to spare? I could do it while swapping CDs from the player.

With such a quick rise to mastering the roads, it seems appropriately karmic that I should have been taken down a notch or two just as suddenly. For my twenty-first birthday, my friend Jessica took me out to dinner. At the time, she didn’t have access to a car, and so I drove the two of us over to St. Louis, and when we were done eating we came back to go see a movie. By the time we were done, it was close to eleven o’clock, and on the way home, we passed a parked highway patrolman. I had time to notice the glint of light along the side of his cruiser as we passed by at something close to fifteen miles an hour over the limit, and I watched through the rearview mirror as the point where we’d passed him slowly, eternally shrank into the distance. Just as I was starting to think that I’d somehow skated by unnoticed — maybe he was napping or my speedometer had simply been playing a cruel birthday joke on me — I saw the red glow of taillights, suddenly there on the skin of the darkness like a pair of bright welts.

Even as he pulled onto the road and started toward me, I clung to the notion that he was headed to a burgled department store. One might think that the flashing red and blue lights would have shattered such a notion, but denial can be a powerful thing for a young man who thinks he’s invincible. When I realized that he was coming for me, I slowed down, easing onto the shoulder of the road and wondering what to do. With something like panic I kept my hands on the steering wheel, not wanting the officer to mistake a move for my wallet for a try at a loaded pistol. In my head I went through every episode of Cops I’ve ever seen. I considered all the things that people in these kinds of situations tend to do — throw open the door and bolt out onto the highway; engage in an escalating argument with the officer about the truthfulness of his radar gun; find the most conspicuous place for a nickel bag of pot — and made sure that I did everything to differentiate myself from those people.

Next to me, Jessica groaned. “Aw,” she said. “Happy birthday.” I make a quick glance in her direction, and I noticed upon her face a look of grim solidarity. I’m not usually the kind of person to throw someone under the proverbial bus, but I couldn’t help wondering if there were some way I could pin this whole mess on Jessica.

“Officer, she took me out for my birthday, and I didn’t think I was going to have to drive. It’s been a long night, and I’m so sorry that I didn’t realize the speed limit was so slow through here. We were talking about the great birthday I’m having, you know? And I guess I just couldn’t wait to get back home.”

In the end though, once the officer, a man in his early thirties, took my license and shone his jumbo, cucumber-sized flashlight upon it, any bright ideas I’d come up with about betraying my friend dissolved. The officer considered my license for a second, and after stepping back to his cruiser to, I don’t know, scan a database for my befuddled mugshot or arm-length rap sheet, he returned and handed me my identification back. “Let’s slow it down a little tonight,” he said, in a voice that implied humor was an alien notion, and excuses would not be tolerated. “I’ll let you off with a warning. Consider it a birthday present from me.”

About a year later, I was on my own, driving to work, when I passed a police officer and was promptly pulled over for going something like seventy in a fifty-five mile per hour zone. The irony of the matter is that, that day, I was on schedule and actually had extra time before I had to leave. I’m not sure why I’m consistently late, but when I do manage to be on time, I’m elated and filled with a sense of accomplishment. The extra time came in handy, then, seeing as I would spend what felt like a half hour in my car, idling along the side of a road that seemed all the more popular today. While waiting for the officer to get out of his patrol car, I counted the number of passing vehicles, and once the pairs of eyes glancing over at me tallied up in the twenties, I just sat there and looked down at my lap.

When he tapped on my window, I rolled it down and smiled up at his weathered face with my best what’s-a-guy-to-say? look. He asked me how I was doing today, and I said I was doing fine. Then, like an idiot, I asked him how he was doing; maybe I was just being nice, but more likely I was trying to get on his good side.

“Do you have any idea how fast you were going back there?”

I pretended to think, as if the image of the speedometer hadn’t burned itself into my mind once I realized I’d just shot like a bullet on meth past a cop. “Maybe … um … sixty-five?”

“Can you tell me where you were headed in such a hurry?”

“I was … oh … on my way … to work,” I mumbled, so low that he had to have me repeat myself. I said it again, croaking as if the past ten years had never happened, and I was twelve again. My name tag from work was lying in one of the cupholders, and I retrieved it, kneading it with my fingers and presenting it to the officer like an offering of proof.

“Well,” he said, “I clocked you at about sixty-nine. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to give you a ticket.” And after asking me if I had seventy-five dollars, maybe stashed in the glove box or in one of my canvas sacks branded with money signs, he nodded when I told him I didn’t have enough cash on me to take my license back. Instead, he tucked it into an elongated black pad from which he tore a yellow piece of paper. On it were all the details of my embarrassment: my name; my car; the speed and circumstances of my illegality. After explaining where to go to get my license back and pay my ticket, he left me to the rest of my day, and I drove off feeling off-put and unmoored.

These days, while my nervousness around police officers is as strong as ever, I can say that passing by a parked patrolman is getting easier to do without breaking out into sweat. Anymore, I take to driving like a grandmother. It’s not as exciting as plowing down the highway, but it’s certainly cheaper. Though I’ve worked my way into a slightly better car, I drive it like a conestoga wagon, ambling down the streets and trying to ignore all the sighs, glares, and horn honks that try to push me along.

When I do pass by a cop, going all of thirty miles an hour, I’ll glance over and think, See, I’m obeying the law. I’m being good. As if they don’t have other things to do, bigger criminals to catch. Like the guy who torched the hospital burn ward, or the person stalking rest stops with his hidden switchblade. Or the anxious-looking man behind the wheel of a car, shambling along the highways with the continuous, pestering thought, Did I do that?

The Greatest Gifts of All

I’ve always enjoyed the process of buying gifts. Whether it’s for a birthday, holiday, or upcoming prison release, one of the most appealing ways to spend a day off work is picking up the perfect present. It’s not just the idea of stepping out of the house that gets me going, it’s the thrill of the hunt; it’s a primal feeling, almost instinctual, and something that I imagine even certain types of cavemen felt when approaching, say, their friends Grog and Urga’s third wedding anniversary. Nothing beats the feeling I get when I stumble upon that great find in some hole-in-the-wall craft shop or bookstore. As much as I enjoy receiving gifts, I enjoy the act of giving that much more.

That said, when it comes to presents, the best ones to buy are the ones that wander off the beaten path. Sure, shopping for Stephen King’s latest bestseller or a new blockbuster DVD release is fine, but it’s kind of like shooting fish in a barrel. Anyone can pick up these types of items. How hard is it to stop at just about any local megastore or go to an online retailer? The answer is: not hard enough. There’s no fun in it. Instead, if someone tells me they want something like that, I’ll start searching for a special edition or a limited release. If it’s a book, maybe there’s a copy that’s been signed by the author or an expert forger. For DVDs, why get it in the regular plastic case if there’s a version that comes in a collectible tin or a replica of a famous television spaceship? These little touches help differentiate my gift from just any gift and only sweeten the discovery.

For me, if a springtime birthday party is a joy to buy presents for, then the period of time from Black Friday to New Year’s Eve is the nirvana where my gift-giving glee is in full force. Last September, I received a phone call from my grandmother asking me for a few ideas for possible Christmas presents. The day she called was an unseasonably warm one, and I thought it strange that I should be sitting in front of a fan, sweating like a fugitive, and thinking about a wintry holiday almost three months away. Struggling for breath under the blanket of heat, I told her I’d think about it, though after passing out I forgot all about putting together a list for her. Later that week, I was walking around a department store when I noticed that the Halloween decorations they’d put up just weeks before were now quickly being downsized to a couple aisles and replaced with warm red and cool silver decorations. The temperature had leveled out by then, and it felt right — or, at least, better suited — for the approach of Christmas. The excitement I felt was encompassing, and by the time I stepped away from the rows of ornaments and dead-eyed animatronic reindeer I was already thinking about gifts I might pick up.

In my experience, I’ve found it easier to shop for friends than relatives. I don’t know if it’s because my immediate family and I rarely hold a conversation much beyond “Hi” or “I’ll see you later,” but my friends are always the easier group to shop for when I go hunting for gifts.

This is where the joy of perusing smaller stores and shops comes into play. What could be more relaxing than, on a beautiful day, taking a stroll along your local promenade or shopping district and seeking out stores that may or may not be open in a month’s time? When I was growing up near Alton, Illinois, opening a store specializing in overpriced, poor-quality artwork or ceramic figurines was an act of gumption to say the least. To this day I still enjoy checking out the wares of shops like these not only to see if, somehow, I can find a framed picture or small statue suitable for gifting, but also because, in rougher financial areas, I like guessing how long it will be until these stores go out of business. If you’re shopping with a friend, make a game out of it. Loser buys lunch!

When I’m browsing, I’ll always try to imagine the look on a friend’s face upon opening a certain present. Will it elicit a certain amount of enthusiasm? If I think so, I’ll jot it down on a piece of paper or make a note on my phone. If I’m unsure of my friend’s reaction but it’s something I would like to have, I’ll ask myself, how can I convince them to give it back to me? And if the gift wouldn’t interest either of us, I move on.

Whereas shopping for my friends can be a breeze sometimes, presents for my family can be problematic at best. It’s hard trying to scrounge up meaningful gifts for people who, sometimes, might as well be strangers, and it’s so disheartening to have to fall back on gift certificates to places like Home Depot or a certain megastore owned by a family of Bible-thumping nutjobs. Who enjoys something like that? I guess a place like Home Depot I can see — a carpenter, a handyman, someone who enjoys taking on the little around-the-house projects that require such festive utilities as a socket wrench or a rubber mallet. But a gift card to someplace like Costco makes me imagine somebody traipsing around a cold, expansive warehouse store, a smile stretched across his face, tossing into a squeaky-wheeled cart things like shampoo and motor oil, maybe thumbtacks or a plastic paper towel holder.

That just seems so sad.

At a Christmas party at my aunt’s house one year, I received a little decorated envelope as my gift from her. I could tell it was going to be either a gift card or a small folded-up piece of money, and so I opened it, expecting to be able to go get a novel from a bookstore or maybe a new shirt. Instead, much to my disappointment, the gift card was for Casey’s, a local gas station chain. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, but I wasn’t sure how exactly my aunt had imagined my reaction to something like that. In a couple weeks I would turn twenty, and so I’d already learned the joys of having to fill a gas tank, but still. Who wants to get gasoline as a gift? My brother, just fifteen years old, got the same gift, and so, after giving our aunt our most sincere-sounding thanks, we made plans to sell our gift cards to our grandmother.

That’s why, in my opinion, lists are a lifesaver. I have friends who think that resorting to a Christmas or birthday list is the ultimate form of gifting failure. My friend Jessica, for example, would almost never use a list, for others or herself, reasoning that if she knows someone and someone knows her, figuring out what to get for each other without being told shouldn’t be that difficult a task. As for me, a list has a certainty, a reassurance of perfection. Not that I don’t enjoy a little spontaneity in presents — I’ll pick up little knick-knacks or trinkets like a lighthouse figurine for my great-grandmother or a comfortable throw for a friend’s mother — but for the big gifts, I want something that won’t fail. There’s nothing worse than the naked look of disappointment that comes, if only momentarily, before being replaced by an exaggerated projection of joy.

Once I have my gifts purchased and at hand, the next step for me is finding the best way to present them. To some, the options for wrapping, bagging, and boxing might be overwhelming, but I enjoy the seemingly limitless possibilities that are available. In my humble opinion, getting the right wrapping paper or gift bag is almost equally important to the present itself. A gift’s wrapping can make or break the occasion.

I’ll stand sometimes in the stationery department of my local retailer, looking at all my options, weighing one hunter green bow against another one, slightly lighter, with a tag that reads “seafoam”. I can spend hours there imagining the opening of a particular gift and the recipient’s stare as they look upon my present, transfixed. As with a pet or a prostitute, the bag and paper must suit the recipient’s personality. You wouldn’t want a rambunctious puppy jumping up on your seventy-six-year-old Aunt Ida any more than you’d want your fifteen year old son’s first time with a woman to be spoiled by the fact that she has a penis because you didn’t do your homework.

So put a little thought into it. Dark hues on simpler patters, I’ve found, are good for manic depressives, as they’re often surprised that anyone’s bothered to remember their birthday or Christmas at all, so it’s best not to overwhelm them with ornate designs or bold colors. For circuit boys the opposite is true; one can’t go wrong with loud-colored gift bags and lots of tissue paper, especially if the recipient is still high on ecstasy. The bright colors will be mesmerizing and the sound and feel of the tissue paper as they rifle through it should make for lots of fun sensory moments.

I understand that when the gift is opened, the paper is going to be nothing but a shredded afterthought on the table and the decorative tissue a crumpled plaything for a house cat or unsupervised infant, but none of that matters to me. What’s more important is the aesthetic quality and the sense of anticipation a well-decorated gift inspires in the person for whom it is intended. That’s what makes it all worth it. In the end, for me anyway, gift-giving is an artform, no different than painting or nude interpretive dance. No matter how long or hard I have to search, no matter how hard a gift is to wrap, bag, or box, I enjoy knowing that I can make a person feel valued and cared about and that he or she will come, almost certainly, to regard mine as the greatest gifts of all.

A Good, Old-Fashioned, Jewish Christmas

FULL DISCLOSURE: AS I WROTE THIS, I WAS LISTENING TO BOB DYLAN SING “HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS” OFF HIS NEW CHRISTMAS ALBUM: CHRISTMAS IN THE HEART (WHICH I ASSURE YOU IS A REAL THING).

As you can probably tell, this is going to be different. For starters, I feel as though I must preface this post by saying that I’m not a religious person—and it’s my parents fault. I never went to church, both my Mom and my Dad found “Church” to be creepy and hypocritical. They were right, and I don’t blame them for keeping both myself and my sister away from Organized Religion.

Both my parents believe in the basic tenant of “God will be cool as long as you live a good life.” Christians will say (and have told me when I’ve repeated this) that unfortunately that isn’t good enough. In fact, I had one spit-frothing-Christian once shout at me that “your good works are dirt in the eyes of the Lord.”

Well shit. Here I was NOT killing this spit-frothing-asshole because I didn’t want to piss-off God…and he was telling me that it didn’t matter. Jesus said “I am the way” to which I reply “That’s your opinion.” I wasn’t raised with that as a core belief, and many people I know who WERE turned out to be assholes (some of them spit-frothing). Ever the antagonist, I feel that if that really is how God is, I want no part of Him.

But I think that’s a lot of bullshit. After all, if you’re not raised with religion…God hates you? You go straight to Hell if you’re born in China (where Christianity is a no-no)? That’s a billion people going to Hell because of Geography? I think not.

And like I said, if God really would damn say, the Indians of pre-Columbus America to fiery damnation simply because they were born in an era where GOOD CHRISTIANS were unable to reach them...well then I don’t want to hang with God.

So growing up my life was pretty religion-free, but my Dad works for Hallmark so we were VERY big on holidays. Holidays are good. They bring people together, they stimulate the economy. They…uh…give us time off from work and/or school?

Christmas was one of those holidays where I was excited about the PRESENTS but leery of the “trappings” of Christmas (the “reason for the season” if you will). I don’t need to tell you that every TRUE Christian knows that Christmas is a holiday co-opted from the Pagans. And that Jesus was NOT born on the 25th of December. Basically, Christmas is just an excuse for a party. Now, I’m always cool with parties….except when they depress the hell out of me.

And that’s what Christmas has degenerated into. To be brief: Christmas depresses me because I don’t have enough money to buy the people I love the things I feel they deserve. It depresses me because I always spend too much money. It depresses me because the gifts I get are crappy, thus making me feel ungrateful. It depresses me because it makes me yearn for childhood, when Christmas was wonderful and magical.

When it was ALCOHOL-free Egg Nogg and fuzzy slipper. Back when Santa was real, and I didn’t have to think about SATAN (and how 90% of this country thinks I’m going to hell because of a parenting choice).

So this year I’m “Skipping Christmas” (to reference a bad John Grisham novel, oh wait—they’re all bad…never mind).

I’m going to have a GOOD, OLD-FASHIONED Jewish Christmas. Now, before I tell you what that is and what that means (it’s fucking wonderful kids) I feel that I need to address my parents:

“Mom, Dad. I love you both and I know you’re disappointed that I’m not coming home this year. I’m sure a part of you (just a part, a small part because you’re both really cool) thinks that this has something to do with me marrying a Jewish girl. And you’re right; it DOES have something to do with it. But you see, just because you’re BORN into one thing doesn’t mean that you weren’t really MEANT for something else. I love you, and I’m coming home for Cousin Jimmy’s (I’m sorry “James”) holiday party this weekend…but I’m not coming home for Christmas. I’m having a GOOD, OLD-FASHIONED Jewish Christmas here in St. Louis.”

Okay. I feel like they might still blame my wife on some level, but there’s nothing I can do about that. When I say a “Jewish Christmas” I bet a lot of you are thinking “Ebenezer Scrooge.” Well nothing could be further from the truth! You see, much like me, the Jews of the World don’t really dig on Christmas either. And on this day, 90% of the US “disappears” into lame family parties and long, snore-ous sermons/services.

The heavens part, and so do the crowds!

“But Jason,” I hear you say, “nothing is open on Christmas Day!”

Ah, there you are incorrect my friend. There are two things that are open SPECIFICALLY for Jewish Christmas: the movies and Chinese restaurants. Apparently, as my wife has explained to me, Jews get up early…go to the movies (more than one show! *squeal*) then gorge themselves on crab-rangoon.

Sign me the fuck-up. Sorry Jesus, but you lost me at “movies” and “crab-rangoon.” So that’s what I’m doing. I’m going OUT on CHRISTMAS with my wife to see a crap load of movies and eat chow mein.

“Joy to the World.”

Coming Clean

Like a great number of stereotyped housewives and cartoon elephants, I am scared to death of mice. It’s not the kind of fear that makes a person pull away, slightly put off; rather, my fear of these particular creatures makes me want to curl up into a ball, and only after running away, screaming like a girl. I’m not sure if it’s their shifty eyes or their skimpy, flesh-toned tails, but it never fails that if I see one, my heart skips a beat and I’m left panting, my skin white as a fresh sheet of paper.

Mice, to me, have long been a symbol of filth — not just in the rodent world, but for humans, too. After all, when a person imagines a house with mice, invariably it’s one of those distressed places, something you might stumble upon if you were a wary travelers in a movie about the gruesome deaths of wary travelers. They’re the scavengers of domestic life, hiding in the walls and ceiling like vagrants scraping to get by. That’s a far cry from the cute, big-eared scamps of Jerry the Mouse and Mickey, who, at face value, were cute and seemingly free of communicable diseases. No, mice in the real world helped spread little things like, say, the plague, and thusly should never have made it onto Saturday morning cartoons.

My dislike for these creatures stretches back to when I was young. As a child, I was messy. That’s not to say that I was unclean, but when it came to keeping my room organized, the task of picking up my toys always lost to other activities. Namely, anything other than picking up my toys. One of my most vivid memories is of me, eight years old, sitting on my bed one afternoon. My bedroom floor was so bad that I could only see the blue carpet in little patches, like I was looking down through the canopy of the rainforest, and to get from my door to my desk it was necessary to train like a football player navigating a series of tires.

That day, I was sitting on the edge of my bed, playing with some toy action figures of the superhero variety — probably Spider-Man or Batman — when I glimpsed something small and sickly gray move in between a stuffed animal and a plastic toy car. I started, flinging myself backward onto the center of the bed, and I wondered if I had really just seen what, to me, might have been a monster. Only after carefully scanning the floor did I creep off my mattress and head for the kitchen, where my mother was washing last night’s dishes.

I told her what I’d seen, but she didn’t seem to share my concern.

“Do mice bite?” I asked.

My mind was infested with visions of the vague little creature suddenly appearing at my bare feet, opening its mouth to reveal impossibly oversized fangs not unlike those of a python or a tiger. It’s eyes were a harsh red. Something like that would hiss as it lowered its head.

“It’s not going to bite you,” my mother said, not looking up from the sink and the mound of dishes waiting to be scrubbed.

“Are you sure?” I asked. The possibility of attack seemed inevitable, just like in any number of low-budget creature features my dad and I found on late-night cable. Never in those movies did the mutant crocodile or the irradiated scorpion simply waltz by. For all my mother knew, what I saw might not have been any normal mouse.

Ignoring the immediacy in my voice, my mother sloshed around for a handful of silverware. The lint-colored dishwater looked similar to the shade coloring my mouse. I imagined it having emerged from the dirty water, and now it might be back in there, waiting for the perfect moment to strike at my mother’s bare, water-wrinkled hands.

“You know, it’s not a bad idea for you to clean your room. Maybe there wouldn’t be any mice if you kept your stuff picked up,” she said, draining the sink and refilling it with fresh suds. This was how she operated; never a direct assault, but rather a sly pincer attack of guilt that made everything seem, clearly, like it was your fault.

I returned to my end of the house after an extended stay in the safer, cleaner living room, and with my mother’s suggestion stuck firmly in the back of my head, it only took me another five years to start keeping my room in order.

Now, in my twenties, I’ve developed a healthy, recurring obsession with cleaning. It surfaces randomly — most often at night — and I’ll find myself shaking open a trash bag or two and going through my room, hunting down random things to throw away or give to the local Salvation Army drop box or Goodwill. Sometimes I’ll get a pressing desire to clean the soap scum from the shower walls and doors, while other times it might be the little mud stains on the dining room floor that set my mind to cleaning.

It might be just another specific aspect of my personality, like how my television volume or car’s air conditioner must be set upon an even number, or how my shoes must be matched up and sitting side by side, but I sometimes have to wonder if it might be something more. Maybe it’s a subconscious attempt to keep the mice out, and by extension push the old me away.

In any case, a few weeks ago I started hearing the unsettling scratching sounds in the ceiling above my bedroom, and it reminded me of that moment when I was eight. And as I sat in my desk chair and looked around my room, I noticed little pieces of evidence showcasing my failure, once again, to keep things tidy. There were the piles of dusty books stacked between my bed and desk; wedged beneath my keyboard was a hoard of plastic bags I’d been saving for an event that I couldn’t anticipate or even specify. And to look beyond my bedroom door to the kitchen, the living room, and (oh god) the bathroom was to invite the same feeling of insurmountable dread that people must feel when all hope seems lost.

This never would have happened ten years ago, I thought. Back when my mother was alive, our home was near spotless. As it is now, the cleanest part of our house, thanks to rainfall, has to be the siding. Inside, it’s just my father, brother, and me, and the place is like a dormitory at a particularly third-rate institution. Our living room looks like we’ve either just moved in or are in the process of moving out, and in either case it would appear that we’ve decided to do so without the aid of boxes. Our dining room table sags under weeks’ worth of junk mail and spare change, and the kitchen has enough used dishes spilling out of the sink that, just in case anyone comes over, I’ve already forged a lie about having thrown a dinner party the night before.

Listening to the unsettling sounds above me, my first instinct was to go for a trash bag. Instead, I stayed sitting, dwelling on the scrape of tiny feet, for what might have been twenty minutes. All that time I wanted to blame my brother and father for letting things slip into chaos, but still I couldn’t help but feel slightly guilty about my own faltering attempts to keep things tidy. I glanced toward the hallway leading into the kitchen. A flash of something small and gray darted from my bedroom door into my open closet. Without thinking, I jerked my feet up off the floor. I had to wonder what frightened me more: the fact that mice were in my house, or the idea that, somehow, I’d allowed them back in? At heart was I still some slovenly child?

Looking at the pile of old magazines spilling from beneath my bed, I had to admit it was true.

I swore to myself then that I’d do better. My head felt heavy with the thoughts of daily rituals involving not just the occasional emptying of the trash can but of befriending the mop bucket and bottles of Pledge. I would strap on kneepads and scrape away every bit of dirt and grime in the crevasses of our kitchen and dining room linoleum. Reasoning that a clean house equaled a rodent-free house, I let my fear and hatred of the mice carry my ambitions. I uncurled myself from my chair and forced my feet to touch the floor. Trash bags wouldn’t cut it, I thought; besides, it seemed crazy to go rifling through piles of plastic bags and old clothes, perfect hiding places for a little pack of mice ready to attack me. I’d stick to safer things, like vacuuming.

Considering that they live in the walls, I’m not entirely certain what I expected a shiny kitchen floor to do. Really, I guess a mouse couldn’t care less about the condition of the carpet he’s slinking around on. Still, the cleaning made me feel better. In the end, though, it was my brother, Matt, who took the swiftest action against the mice. While I brought to the fight brooms and scouring pads, he had a thirst for blood. And so, armed with package after package of mousetraps, our kitchen slowly transformed into what could only be described as a minefield.

As the rooms of the house steadily, slowly, transformed back into some semblance of their old selves, I allowed myself a small sense of accomplishment. The mice weren’t gone, and things weren’t perfect, but they were getting there. Until then, I would sit there at my desk, rocking gently back and forth, or simply lie in bed, waiting for the harsh snaps of the metal bars springing down, each one a reassurance that everything would soon be back to the way it once was. Soon we would have a slate just as clean as the gleaming promise of our better future.